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UTAH PHILLIPS DIES-Obit

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UNITED STATES: IN MEMORY


Utah Phillips has left the stage




26 May 2008 06:20 GMT





 

















src="/images/2008/05/907017.jpg" border="0" width="120" height="90" alt="">










Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73

Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38 years, died Friday, May 23rd, 2008, of congestive heart failure in Nevada City, California a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a freelance editor.

Born Bruce Duncan Phillips on May 15, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, he was the son of labor organizers. Whether through this early influence or an early life that was not always tranquil or easy, by his twenties Phillips demonstrated a lifelong concern with the living conditions of working people. He was a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World, popularly known as "the Wobblies," an organizational artifact of early twentieth-century labor struggles that has seen renewed interest and growth in membership in the last decade, not in small part due to his efforts to popularize it.

Phillips died at home, in bed, in his sleep, next to his wife. Read More

see also: U. Utah Phillips Has Passed Away | A Note From Utah | A short jog through a long memory (UtahPhillips.org) | Utah Phillips Blog || Utah Phillips Live 2004 Performance FRSC Raid Benifit || Amy Goodman interviews Utah Phillips || Utah Phillips at the Fiddle Down the FBI Rally, May 2002 || Utah testifies at Judi Bari's trial || Family requests memorial donations to Hospitality House


The offical Obituary as provided by the family. May 24, 2008

"Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73"

Nevada City, California:

Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38 years, died Friday of congestive heart failure in Nevada City, California a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a freelance editor.

Born Bruce Duncan Phillips on May 15, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, he was the son of labor organizers. Whether through this early influence or an early life that was not always tranquil or easy, by his twenties Phillips demonstrated a lifelong concern with the living conditions of working people. He was a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World, popularly known as "the Wobblies," an organizational artifact of early twentieth-century labor struggles that has seen renewed interest and growth in membership in the last decade, not in small part due to his efforts to popularize it.

Phillips served as an Army private during the Korean War, an experience he would later refer to as the turning point of his life. Deeply affected by the devastation and human misery he had witnessed, upon his return to the United States he began drifting, riding freight trains around the country. His struggle would be familiar today, when the difficulties of returning combat veterans are more widely understood, but in the late fifties Phillips was left to work them out for himself. Destitute and drinking, Phillips got off a freight train in Salt Lake City and wound up at the Joe Hill House, a homeless shelter operated by the anarchist Ammon Hennacy, a member of the Catholic Worker movement and associate of Dorothy Day.

Phillips credited Hennacy and other social reformers he referred to as his "elders" with having provided a philosophical framework around which he later constructed songs and stories he intended as a template his audiences could employ to understand their own political and working lives. They were often hilarious, sometimes sad, but never shallow.

"He made me understand that music must be more than cotton candy for the ears," said John McCutcheon, a nationally-known folksinger and close friend. In the creation of his performing persona and work, Phillips drew from influences as diverse as Borscht Belt comedian Myron Cohen, folksingers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and Country stars Hank Williams and T. Texas Tyler.

A stint as an archivist for the State of Utah in the 1960s taught Phillips the discipline of historical research; beneath the simplest and most folksy of his songs was a rigorous attention to detail and a strong and carefully-crafted narrative structure. He was a voracious reader in a surprising variety of fields. Meanwhile, Phillips was working at Hennacy's Joe Hill house. In 1968 he ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. The race was won by a Republican candidate, and Phillips was seen by some Democrats as having split the vote. He subsequently lost his job with the State of Utah, a process he described as "blacklisting."

Phillips left Utah for Saratoga Springs, New York, where he was welcomed into a lively community of folk performers centered at the Caffé Lena, operated by Lena Spencer. "It was the coffeehouse, the place to perform. Everybody went there. She fed everybody," said John "Che" Greenwood, a fellow performer and friend. Over the span of the nearly four decades that followed, Phillips worked in what he referred to as "the Trade," developing an audience of hundreds of thousands and performing in large and small cities throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. His performing partners included Rosalie Sorrels, Kate Wolf, John McCutcheon and Ani DiFranco.

"He was like an alchemist," said Sorrels, "He took the stories of working people and railroad bums and he built them into work that was influenced by writers like Thomas Wolfe, but then he gave it back, he put it in language so the people whom the songs and stories were about still had them, still owned them. He didn't believe in stealing culture from the people it was about."

A single from Phillips's first record, "Moose Turd Pie," a rollicking story about working on a railroad track gang, saw extensive airplay in 1973. From then on, Phillips had work on the road. His extensive writing and recording career included two albums with Ani DiFranco which earned a Grammy nomination. Phillips's songs were performed and recorded by Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Tom Waits, Joe Ely and others. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Folk Alliance in 1997.

Phillips, something of a perfectionist, claimed that he never lost his stage fright before performances. He didn't want to lose it, he said; it kept him improving. Phillips began suffering from the effects of chronic heart disease in 2004, and as his illness kept him off the road at times, he started a nationally syndicated folk-music radio show, "Loafer's Glory," produced at KVMR-FM and started a homeless shelter in his rural home county, where down-on-their-luck men and women were sleeping under the manzanita brush at the edge of town. Hospitality House opened in 2005 and continues to house 25 to 30 guests a night. In this way, Phillips returned to the work of his mentor Hennacy in the last four years of his life.

Phillips died at home, in bed, in his sleep, next to his wife. He is survived by his son Duncan and daughter-in-law Bobette of Salt Lake City, son Brendan of Olympia, Washington; daughter Morrigan Belle of Washington, D.C.; stepson Nicholas Tomb of Monterrey, California; stepson and daughter-in-law Ian Durfee and Mary Creasey of Davis, California; brothers David Phillips of Fairfield, California, Ed Phillips of Cleveland, Ohio and Stuart Cohen of Los Angeles; sister Deborah Cohen of Lisbon, Portugal; and a grandchild, Brendan. He was preceded in death by his father Edwin Phillips and mother Kathleen, and his stepfather, Syd Cohen.

The family requests memorial donations to Hospitality House, P.O. Box 3223, Grass Valley, California 95945 (530) 271-7144 www.hospitalityhouseshelter.org











homepage:: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/05/24/18502004.php














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Pic Of Utah with Milwaukee Wobb Folksinger Larry Penn



marco 26.May.2008 11:09






















Here's a pic of Larry Penn, Milwaukee's boxcar and Utah Phillips from
the Mayday concert at Pabst Theater two Maydays ago.
I remember how difficult it was to partially disassemble that
boxcar, reassemble it, haul it up and down carpeted stairs and
etc., to have it in the lobby of the Pabst Theater, but the people
there were happy to help and that all part of what made that evening
such a great success for everyone involved.

Memorable!

 http://milwaukee.indymedia.org/en/2007/05/207347.shtml
 http://my.execpc.com/~cookeman/disc.html
 http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/02/209229.shtml

Bruce had such a good time there he suggested he might play every May
first there for the rest of his life. Pabst Theater people said fine,
Larry Penn said fine, others said fine.

When Utah was unable to travel in late April, the Milwaukee Wobbs
began planning a concert with "Utah and friends" in September instead.
I'm not sure if plans are still in effect for a concert of "Utah's Friends,"
but I'm sure the date's still open for such a thing. Contact the MKE wobbs
for more details. I bet they're going to to either that or something even
better, eh?

cheers,
marco





Utah Phillips on "Making a Living, Not a Killing"



mediagrrl9 05.Jul.2008 18:03










Amy Goodman interviews Utah Phillips for Democracy Now! in 2004. In part 5 of the interview, Utah tells how he started out in New York, fired his agent, and decided not to play music for profit.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv4DJmcFTqE





Utah Phillips on the Role of the Media



mediagrrl9 05.Jul.2008 18:21










Amy Goodman interviews Utah Phillips for Democracy Now! in 2004. In part 4 of the interview, Utah talks about television, storytelling, capitalism, and alternative media.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi2RJdKTHC0





Utah Phillips on His Name, the IWW, and War Resistance



mediagrrl9 05.Jul.2008 18:34










Amy Goodman interviews Utah Phillips for Democracy Now! in 2004. In Part 3 of the interview, Utah explains how he got the name "U. Utah", the history of war resistance, and the Wobblies.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07H6-YjdQhk





Utah Phillips on War and Non-Violence



mediagrrl9 05.Jul.2008 18:36










Amy Goodman interviewed Utah Phillips for Democracy Now! in 2004. In part 2 of the interview, Utah discusses his own military service and becoming a pacifist.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VOnikFeLW0





Utah Phillips on Learning on the Road



mediagrrl9 05.Jul.2008 18:37










Amy Goodman interviews Utah Phillips for Democracy Now! in 2004. In Part 1 of the interview, he talks about his approach to music and learning from his audiences.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PleEOP9wuqk


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Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Derelicts

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ml60_alfred-hitchcock-presents-the-derel_shortfilms
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